Global Read Webinar Series
Once a month throughout the Spring, the World Area Book Awards (Américas Award, Children’s Africana Book Award, Freeman Book Award, Middle East Book Award, and South Asia Book Award) sponsor a free 60 minute webinar on a book recognized by one of the awards to facilitate a discussion with the author on how to incorporate the book into the classroom. We encourage educators to read the books with your colleagues, students, and community, and then join us to hear more from the author. Below, we’ve shared information on this year’s schedule.
2025 Global Reads Webinar Series
February 27: CABA with Lesley Younge, Nearer My Freedom
Registration Link: https://howard.zoom.us/meeting/register/BdSZc8qGQrq3uDxzG_h0Xw
March 25 : Américas Award with Ari Tison, Saints of the Household
Registration Link: https://arizona.zoom.us/meeting/register/q8sIN5gxR7GKfYsDs31wNg
April: MEOC–More Information TBA
May 6th: Freeman Book Awards/NCTAsia with Brandon Hoang, The Crossbow of Destiny
Registration Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/_Li49wO9TzCV5_U8vYpP0A
June: SABA–More Information TBA
The 2025 Américas Award Global Reads Webinar will take place on Tuesday, March 25 (7:00-8:00 PM EST). K12 educators, join us for an evening with Ari Tison, author of the 2024 Américas Award Winner, Saints of the Household. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss the book with the author and consider classroom applications.
Saints of the Household is a haunting contemporary YA about an act of violence in a small-town–beautifully told by a debut Indigenous Costa Rican-American writer–that will take your breath away.
Max and Jay have always depended on one another for their survival. Growing up with a physically abusive father, the two Bribri American brothers have learned that the only way to protect themselves and their mother is to stick to a schedule and keep their heads down.
But when they hear a classmate in trouble in the woods, instinct takes over and they intervene, breaking up a fight and beating their high school’s star soccer player to a pulp. This act of violence threatens the brothers’ dreams for the future and their beliefs about who they are. As the true details of that fateful afternoon unfold over the course of the novel, Max and Jay grapple with the weight of their actions, their shifting relationship as brothers, and the realization that they may be more like their father than they thought. They’ll have to reach back to their Bribri roots to find their way forward.
Told in alternating points of view using vignettes and poems, debut author Ari Tison crafts an emotional, slow-burning drama about brotherhood, abuse, recovery, and doing the right thing.
Pura Belpré Award Winner
Walter Award Winner for Young Adult Literature
A YALSA William C. Morris Award Finalist
Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award Winner
Américas Book Award Winner for Young Adult Literature
A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year
A Chicago Public Library Best of the Year
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults
Read more about the book in Medium’s Stories of Saints and SLJ’s starred review.
WHEN: Tuesday, March 25, 2025 at
7:00-8:00 pm Eastern
6:00-7:00 pm Central
5:00 – 6:00 pm Mountain
4:00-5:00 pm Pacific
WHERE: This event will take place on Zoom.
REGISTRATION: Registration is required for this event. Register here: https://arizona.zoom.us/meeting/register/q8sIN5gxR7GKfYsDs31wNg
For more information, please email [email protected].
Américas Award Sponsors
The awards are administered by the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs (CLASP) and coordinated by both Tulane University’s Stone Center for Latin American Studies and the University of Arizona’s Center for Latin American Studies. Generous support is also provided by Florida International University, Michigan State University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles, UNC-Duke Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Florida, University of Michigan, University of New Mexico, University of Texas at Austin, University of Utah, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Vanderbilt University.